to
rear them from childhood, and give them a religious and moral education;
after all our labour, others of their own class seduce them away to those
who can afford to pay higher for their services. This is not the case in a
few remote districts. Where surrounding mountains seem to exclude the
contagion of the world, some traces of fidelity and affection among
domestics still remain. But it must be remarked, that, in those very
districts, it is usual to treat inferiors with courtesy and kindness, and
to consider those domestics who marry out of the family as holding a kind
of relation to it, and still claiming protection. In short, the corruption
of that class of people is, doubtless, to be attributed to the example of
their superiors. But how severely are those superiors punished? Why this
general indifference about home; why are the household gods, why is the
sacred hearth so wantonly abandoned? Alas! the charm of home is destroyed,
since our children, educated in distant seminaries, are strangers in the
paternal mansion; and our servants, like mere machines, move on their
mercenary track without feeling or exciting one kind or generous sentiment.
Home, thus despoiled of all its charms, is no longer the scene of any
enjoyments but such as wealth can purchase. At the same time we feel there
a nameless cold privation, and conscious that money can coin the same
enjoyments with more variety elsewhere, we substitute these futile and
evanescent pleasures for that perennial spring of calm satisfaction,
"without o'erflowing full," which is fed by the exercise of the kindly
affections, and soon indeed must those stagnate where there are not proper
objects to excite them. I have been forced into this painful digression by
unavoidable comparisons. To return:--

Amidst all this mild and really tender indulgence to their negroes, these
colonists had not the smallest scruple of conscience with regard to the
right by which they held them in subjection. Had that been the case, their
singular humanity would have been incompatible with continued injustice.
But the truth is, that of law the generality of those people knew little;
and of philosophy, nothing at all. They sought their code of morality in
the Bible, and there imagined they found this hapless race condemned to
perpetual slavery; and thought nothing remained for them but to lighten the
chains of their fellow Christians, after having made them such. This I
neither "extenuate" n